How to Throw a Classy Dinner Party

Entertaining at home is both an affordable way to be social and an important skill. While a dinner party may seem like a daunting task at first, you can host parties at all levels of formality and really get accustomed to hosting a delightful evening.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Guest list
• A free evening
• Your own culinary prowess

1. 
    

   Begin by deciding on your level of formality, guest list, and available evening. Send invites by email, evite, phone, or even actual cards depending on the type of party you are throwing. Confirm a quorum of invitees and then continue with your plans.

2. 
    

   Plan your menu. Think about cost, formality, timing, and your own skills. Also think about your guests' dietary needs and restrictions. Italian food is often easy to prepare ahead of time and then place in buffet servers to keep warm. Consider pre-making salads and desserts to minimize the amount of time you spend in the kitchen and away from your guests.

3. 
    

   Make sure you have the necessary flatware, plates, and glassware to serve your menu to all of your guests. Then think about serving dishes and platters as well as linens and centerpieces. Plenty of stores carry all ranges of dinner wares, so over time do add to your collection so you can expand your dinner party hosting options.

4. 
    

   Put together a schedule for preparing and serving courses so you make sure everything is served at the proper time and temperature. Clean up you home and decorate according to the tenor of the event. Give yourself a little time before everyone arrives to do a once over and then to get dressed yourself. Then, enjoy...you've done all the hard work ahead of time so relax and have fun!

Tips & Warnings

• Develop speciality dishes that you can treat everyone to. Desserts are good for this as are unique twists like homemade past fro scratch.
• Really take the time to put together a beautiful table.
• If you've never hosted a dinner party before, start small. A formal twelve person evening is a significant undertaking.

[purpledagonfly]

on 5/21/2009 I've always wanted to have a dinner party. Now I know how to thanks. 4*